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CBC woes: time to face a new audience Published: January 5 2007 by Elizabeth Nickson This 21st-century media world that we're in is incredibly dynamic and changing and audiences are moving all over the place,” Tony Burman, CBC News editor-in-chief, told CP on Dec. 7. Translation: We don't know where our audience is going, all we know is they're gone. Tell us another one, Tony. “We'll be looking at a more strategic multi-platform treatment of stories that moves audiences from radio to the web, readers of the web to television, and so on.” Translation: Give us more money and we'll go looking for them. Spare us, Tony. It’s no use starting up your programming or youthifying it to take it to a new generation, most of us would rather watch anything, and I mean ANYTHING, else. This is from someone who is traveling this week, and in the three houses I’m staying in, at least part of the family income comes from the Corporation. Plus I've been on the CBC, lots. Once they even offered to send a helicopter for me. But the last time I was on, I dozed off during the interview. “Elizabeth,” said Shelagh Rogers, “have you anything to add?” “Oh! Nope!,” said I, roused from my stupor of boredom. And I like Shelagh Rogers, I fall into her voice, I want her to be my mummy and best friend, she’s sooo understanding. Which is to say that there’s nothing wrong with the actual people producing the programs. No, it’s the four layers of useless suits that squat upon them, trying to find ways to make their jobs necessary. In a privately held corporation they'd have been fired many decades ago. But this is the Corporation, charged with defining Canada for Canadians; therefore they need all these tenured 60s flower children who know who we should be (socialists) and have $1 billion a year to force it down our throats. So when they get Jimmy Carter on, it’s all sucky face noises and devotion, and when they get Preston Manning on they treat him like a crook. No mention of the fact that Jimmy Carter has been supporting tyrants for decades or that Preston Manning kick-started the Alberta revolution, upon which our current prosperity rests. There are interminable interviews with single mothers working for $11 an hour, with no questions about where the heck the father is, or perhaps that getting pregnant at 18, and again at 21, may be stupid? No, it's all about how hideous our lives are, how predatory the corporate elites, and how men (except for Stephen Lewis and Jimmy Carter) are basically criminals. Even Pastor Rick Warren (author of megaseller The Purpose Driven Life) said last month that two wings held the American eagle aloft, the Republican and Democrat. Some of his followers protested, but they knew he was right. Almost six million of us voted Conservative in the last election. Time the CBC recognized that we shouldn't be in a socialist re-education gulag, that some conservative ideas are right on, and get back to representing ALL Canadians. Perhaps then they’d have an audience.

© 2007 Elizabeth Nickson The material at this website is available only for personal non-commercial purposes, and it may not be reproduced without permission.